<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br></div>I apologise if I come to this debate a little late but prompted by John and my renewed interest in the TDWG Ontology I feel I should. I have several short points. I hope I am not out of scope not being fully conversant with the debate so far.<div><br></div><div><ul class="MailOutline"><li>Generally we judge the class of an object by its properties. i.e. If it walks like a duck and quacks it is probably a duck (apologies to ornithologists)</li><li>The sender and receiver often have a different classification systems for messages. e.g. Published specimen data is often(perhaps usually) received and treated as occurrence data.</li><li>I assume DwC is an generic way for marking up messages rather than a full blown ontology. The basisOfRecord and dcterms:type should therefore be thought of as hints on how to interpret a record rather than declarations of class membership. Class membership is decided by the receiver. An "unmissable special offer" to the sender may be a "useful fire lighter" to the receiver.</li><li>dcterms:type is used by the world and so should probably contain a generic term for systems/people who don't understand basisOfRecord.</li><li>basisOfRecord should contain anything that is well defined in natural language.</li></ul><div><br></div><div>I suppose I am saying I don't understand the problem. Can some one summarise it?</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks,</div><div><br></div><div>Roger</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></body></html>